UKC

Top five book list recommendation

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 The Ice Doctor 03 Oct 2016
If you were going to recommend 5 books that are must reads during your life that have nothing to do with climbing and are NOT NOVELS, personal self help or fiction, what would they be?

That should get you thinking....

 Tom Last 03 Oct 2016
In reply to The Ice Doctor:

Cosmos, Carl Sagan
 Jon Stewart 03 Oct 2016
In reply to The Ice Doctor:
Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman is an absolute must-read. Incredibly insightful on how the mind works and how this leads us into all sorts of bother in our lives.

The Self Illusion by Bruce Hood is brilliant, if you like having your illusion that you are indeed you, shattered.

For physics, I haven't read Cosmos, but Carl Sagan is brilliant so I'll trust Tom's recommendation. Definitely don't go with Stephen Hawking, who doesn't write well. Richard Feynman is great too.

The Selfish Gene and/or The Blind Watchmaker by Dawkins are essential. Because he comes across as a wanker, Dawkins' amazing achievements in biology, are often overlooked, and he's very good at expressing these incredibly important ideas about what life is and how it works.

All my non-fiction reading tends to be science. Interested to hear others' must-reads for other non-fiction.
Post edited at 19:29
 alan moore 03 Oct 2016
In reply to The Ice Doctor:

In Search of Captain Zero by Alan Z Weisbecker (surfing)
The Wreckers by Bella Bathurst (wrecking)
Domu by Katsushiro Otomo (the dreams of children)
A Riot of My Own by Johnny Green(The Clash)
The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe (flying)
 thomm 04 Oct 2016
In reply to The Ice Doctor:
Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond
If This is a Man by Primo Levi
Wild Swans by Jung Chang
Two Years Before the Mast by RH Dana
Ring of Bright Water by Gavin Maxwell

Bonus book:
Wind, Sand and Stars by Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Post edited at 15:18
 planetmarshall 04 Oct 2016
In reply to The Ice Doctor:

Others not mentioned...

Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 by Tony Judt
The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives by Leonard Mlodinow
A Brief History of Everyone who Ever Lived: The Stories in Our Genes by Adam Rutherford (Does every book need a colon in the title now?)
The Poems of Norman MacCaig
The Emperor's New Mind by Roger Penrose


 hokkyokusei 04 Oct 2016
In reply to The Ice Doctor:

Well I don't know if they are MUST reads for everyone, but they certainly helped and entertained me:

Surely You're Joking Mr Feynman - Richard Feynman
A Brief History of Time - Stephen Hawking
The C Programming Language - Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie
The Ancestor's Tale - Richard Dawkins
The Gospel in Brief - Leo Tolstoy

Bonus book:
Counselling for Toads - Robert de Board (although, being written in the form of a novel, it's probably not allowed.)
 planetmarshall 04 Oct 2016
In reply to planetmarshall:

Oh, and lest I forget, essential reading for the UKC forums -

The Art of Always Being Right : Thirty Eight Ways to Win When You Are Defeated by Arthur Schopenhauer, edited by AC Grayling
 Shani 04 Oct 2016
In reply to The Ice Doctor:

The God Delusion - Dawkins
A Brief History of Everything - Bryson
Mathematics from the Birth of Numbers - Gullberg
The Natural Navigator- Dooley
Guns, Germs & Steel - Diamond
 Jon Stewart 04 Oct 2016
In reply to planetmarshall:

> The Emperor's New Mind by Roger Penrose

I wanted to include one on consciousness, but no one's written anything yet that's really compelling. It's still a totally open question, the must-read will be the one that really starts to get on the right path.
1
 pneame 04 Oct 2016
In reply to The Ice Doctor:

A bridge between novel and non-fiction -
Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder
A novel, but really a palatable history of philosophy that my Dad recommended. I must read it again....

The other 4 - I'm thinking.....
The other Feynman anecdote collection "What do you care what other people think"
 DaveHK 04 Oct 2016
In reply to The Ice Doctor:

Recollected Essays by Wendell Berry
The Richness of Life by Stephen Jay Gould
In reply to The Ice Doctor:

Race for the South Pole - the expedition diaries of Scott and Amundsen

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Race-South-Pole-Roland-Huntford/dp/1441169822

as the title suggests- the text of the diaries of the two protagonists, cut back and forth in date order. the businesslike and efficient progress of amundsen's party contrasts with the hopeful but ill prepared scott expedition; and the slow, relentless unravelling of scott's party is intensely poignant, as we know how it ends. compelling reading.

and:

the voyage of the beagle, by charles darwin

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Voyage-Beagle-Charles-Researches-Classics/dp/01404...

again, the actual diaries of darwin (i've clearly got a thing for source documents), written as a young man (he was 22 when he set off) when a trip to patagonia was not an exotic holiday destination, but was like going to the moon. it documents his peripheral involvement in rebellions, time spend in the pampas with gauchos, being caught in a major earthquake in chile- if it was written as fiction it would strain credibility, but it all happened, and again, we know what happened next

and an autobiography- David Attenborough's 'Life on Air'. Another 'its impossible that that all happened to one person' situation- his Zoo Quest trips were adventure in a sense that i doubt is even possible today, that the same person was the first controller of BBC2 (and introduced snooker to the telly), before going on to be the defining figure in natural history, is beyond fiction...

 Shani 04 Oct 2016
In reply to Shani:

Hmmm I'm thinking a book on the Peterloo Massacre should be in there.....
 Capricorn One 05 Oct 2016
In reply to The Ice Doctor:

Waterlog - Roger Deakin
 birdie num num 05 Oct 2016
In reply to The Ice Doctor:

Weber's Big Book of Burgers
cb294 05 Oct 2016
In reply to The Ice Doctor:

The Bible (seriously, and I say this as a confirmed atheist)
On the origin of species by means of natural selection, Darwin
Guns Germs and Steel, Jared Diamond
Sapiens, Yual Noah Harari
Bach an me (actually I don´t know whether it is available in English, "Bach und ich" in German) by the Dutch author Maarten t'Hart

CB

 Owen W-G 05 Oct 2016
In reply to cb294:

Evil Cradling by Brian Keenan was one of the most gripping profound reads
 Owen W-G 05 Oct 2016
In reply to cb294:

I thought Sapiens, Yual Noah Harari, was a massive disappointment.
1
 Robert Durran 05 Oct 2016
In reply to Owen W-G:

> I thought Sapiens, Yual Noah Harari, was a massive disappointment.

I thought it was fantastic - on a similar theme but way better than Guns, Germs and Steel.
 Carless 05 Oct 2016
In reply to cb294:

Did you read the Bible cover-to-cover or just the more interesting stories?
I tried cover-to-cover once and found it very difficult to get into
 MonkeyPuzzle 05 Oct 2016
In reply to The Ice Doctor:

Flavours of India - Madhur Jaffrey
Thorburn's Birds - James Fisher (edited and text)
A Brief History of Nearly Everything - Bill Bryson
Kitchen Confidential - Anthony Bourdain
Owen Jones - The Establishment (although I've only just read this, but found it excellent)
cb294 05 Oct 2016
In reply to Carless:

No, not cover to cover, just bits and pieces back when I grew up as a Christian. If you don´t take it as a literal account of creation and human history, but instead read it with secondary literature that puts it in context it will provide a fascinating account of how philosophical thought evolved over a couple thousand of years, and still influences us today (for better or for worse).

I recently read a book that is apparently not available in English that puts forward a new argument about who Homer (the author of the Ilias) really was, and which sources influenced his epos (Raoul Schrott, Homers Heimat). The interesting idea was that Homer was a professional scribe employed in a regional administration in Kilikia under the Assyrian emperor Assurbanipal II. The arguments that I have to accept (as I am a biologist not a linguist) include that Homer wrote Greek using Assyrian turns of phrase and even grammar using a derived Phoenician alphabet. Also, all places described can be fit one to one to the region of modern Alanya in southeast Turkey.

What I found extremely fascinating was that again and again the author juxtaposed accounts of same events from Greek, Egyptian, and Assyrian sources with the accounts of the old testament (prophets and the historic books like Kings, mainly). In many cases the reports were interwoven with metaphysical/religious interpretation, and it is fascinating to see how this changes depending on the viewpoint. Even looking at the old testament in isolation you can see how "gods are everwhere, ours is one of many" evolves into "our local deity is best", to "our local god is the only truly existing one". Even if I believe gods are a figment of our imagination, the history of the idea as such is fascinating.

CB

PS: The Ilias should also be mandatory!
cb294 05 Oct 2016
In reply to MonkeyPuzzle:

How could I forget, the nonfiction book(s) I must have read most of the last 20 or so years:

Del Hoyo / Elliot / Sargatal: Handbook of the birds of the world. Handbook is a great euphemism here, it is 16 volumes plus a critical revision volume....
 MonkeyPuzzle 05 Oct 2016
In reply to The Ice Doctor:

I'm assuming there was an implicit "apart from the Viz Profanosaurus" at the end of the OP.
 planetmarshall 05 Oct 2016
In reply to Carless:

> Did you read the Bible cover-to-cover or just the more interesting stories?
> I tried cover-to-cover once and found it very difficult to get into

I found the ending to be a revelation.

Koza, J.R. (1992). Genetic Programming: On the Programming of Computers by Means of Natural Selection, MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-11170-5
I kicked off an entire career on biologically inspired problem solving from this book.

Zadeh, L.A. (1965). "Fuzzy sets". Information and Control. 8 (3): 338–353. doi:10.1016/s0019-9958(65)90241-x.
The 1965 paper by the inventor of Fuzzy Logic, fundamental to complex nonlinear controllers. Eventually had a pizza with him in a restaurant behind Imperial College. Great guy!

Laverda Jota Owners Manual
Came with my favourite ever motorcycle

Einstein, Special and General Relativity.
He makes it all obvious, without CGI

Lonely Planet Guide to Home Kong
Favourite city after Sheffield!
 Shani 05 Oct 2016
In reply to paul_in_cumbria:
Anyone who works in IT should read "Mythical Man Month"!

Anyone reaching medication age should read "Testing Treatments".
Post edited at 22:38
 StuLade 05 Oct 2016
In reply to The Ice Doctor:

A couple have been recommended already but with good reason and a few more personal choices;

Guns, Germs & Steel - Jared Diamond
Thinking, Fast and Slow - Daniel Kahneman
Bounce: The Myth of Talent and the Power of Practice - Matthew Syed (I read this after Outliers and found Bounce more cohesive in it's arguments and more encouraging)
No Logo - Naomi Klein (very formative for my 15 year old self)
Into the Wild - Jon Kraukauer (another formative book)
 D.mcgaughay 05 Oct 2016
In reply to The Ice Doctor:

"Conquest of happiness" by Bernard Shaw (more philosophical than self help). Albert Camus "Rebel" and George Orwell's essay "The Lion and the Unicorn" possibly one of the greatest essays ever written about the British. "Political Animal" by Jeremy Paxman. "The return of the depression economics" by Paul Krugman. Pretty political and philosophical list really!
 balmybaldwin 06 Oct 2016
In reply to paul_in_cumbria:


> Lonely Planet Guide to Home Kong

> Favourite city after Sheffield!

Freudian slip?
 balmybaldwin 06 Oct 2016
In reply to The Ice Doctor:


The Naked Ape: A Zoologist's Study of the Human Animal
Desmond Morris
abseil 06 Oct 2016
In reply to planetmarshall:

> I found the ending to be a revelation.

That's the Gospel truth. And the Genesis of my thinking.
 Siward 06 Oct 2016
In reply to abseil:

A few more:

The last grain race- Eric Newby
Nathaniel's Nutmeg- interesting yarn about the spice trade; the Dutch were quite, competitive, shall we say
In the Heart of the Sea- shipwreck and thirst
Cod

Is Zen and the art of... a novel?
 planetmarshall 06 Oct 2016
In reply to paul_in_cumbria:

> Koza, J.R. (1992). Genetic Programming: On the Programming of Computers by Means of Natural Selection, MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-11170-5

That's a bit niche, but weirdly was the basis of my Masters. I'd be interested to know, aside from you and I, if any other UKC users have read this book.

> That's a bit niche, but weirdly was the basis of my Masters. I'd be interested to know, aside from you and I, if any other UKC users have read this book.

Actually, I've the whole series of Koza's GP books on my bookshelf in my office, Goldberg's Genetic Algorithms, Simulated Annealing, Ant Colony Optimisation etc....
I dabble as part of my day job

would like to know if anyone else had read Koza too
 Clarence 07 Oct 2016
In reply to The Ice Doctor:

The Men Who Stare at Goats, Jon Ronson - hilarious and scary at the same time.
The Biggest Secret, Davis Icke - ok maybe a little fictional in parts
Angry White Pyjamas, Robert Twigger - one of the most down to earth martial arts memoirs.
Parallel Lives, Plutarch - some of the best biographies of the heroes of the republic, Camillus is a particular favourite.
Epigrams, Martial - The Cyril Fletcher of Imperial Rome.
 HansStuttgart 07 Oct 2016
In reply to The Ice Doctor:

The story of art. E.H. Gombrich

 davidroche 07 Oct 2016
In reply to planetmarshall:

Apocalyptic
 coombsy 07 Oct 2016
In reply to The Ice Doctor:

The Don Camillo Omnibus
 Clarence 08 Oct 2016
In reply to coombsy:

> The Don Camillo Omnibus

I loved the radio series with Alun Armstrong as Don Camillo, must have a look out for the books.

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